R56 Turbo Oil Line Replacement
Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2012 5:30 pm
This seems to be a fairly common problem on the turbo motors, the oil feed line that goes into the top of the turbo has a swedged fitting with an o-ring seal, the o-ring gets dried out from all the heat from the turbo and the line leaks.
We tackled this job today on Counterfit_Mini's car, she bought the line kit from Detroit tuned, which has an actual stainless steel braided line instead of relying on the o-ring to seal it. The line itself is not expensive, but putting it in the car is a major PITA job!
You have to remove all the heat shielding, the downpipe and then the shield behind the downpipe in order to reach the end of the oil line that attaches to the block. No wonder Baron gets $800 for this job!
Probably the hardest part is finding all the screws that hold the shielding together - that and trying to figure out how the two ox sensor wires unclip - hint - the one on top has a clip on the side that you push in on while you pull up on the plug, the one on the bottom has a red "cap" that you pull straight out to release the plug.
Another major PITA is the band clamp between the downpipe and the headpipe or second cat.......it's made of stainless and it's stiff! You have to expand it to get it to slide over the joint - Tip #2 - slide it to the back rather than onto the downpipe - it will be much easier to reinstall.
Tip #3, remove the studs that attach the downpipe to the back of the turbo, otherwise you may not be able to get the pipe off the turbo, there just isn't enough room - typical for MINI. One thing you do not have to do is "service mode", it really won't help that much.
We had one of the studs gall when trying to remove it, fortunately it damaged the stud and not the threads into the turbo, a good tap cleaned the hole right up and a little copper anti-sieze made the new one go in easily. Replacement studs from Baron are quite a bit shorter BTW.
A good tool box is a must for this job, you'll wind up using a bunch of different extensions and other tools just trying to reach some of the more difficult screws.
We tackled this job today on Counterfit_Mini's car, she bought the line kit from Detroit tuned, which has an actual stainless steel braided line instead of relying on the o-ring to seal it. The line itself is not expensive, but putting it in the car is a major PITA job!
You have to remove all the heat shielding, the downpipe and then the shield behind the downpipe in order to reach the end of the oil line that attaches to the block. No wonder Baron gets $800 for this job!
Probably the hardest part is finding all the screws that hold the shielding together - that and trying to figure out how the two ox sensor wires unclip - hint - the one on top has a clip on the side that you push in on while you pull up on the plug, the one on the bottom has a red "cap" that you pull straight out to release the plug.
Another major PITA is the band clamp between the downpipe and the headpipe or second cat.......it's made of stainless and it's stiff! You have to expand it to get it to slide over the joint - Tip #2 - slide it to the back rather than onto the downpipe - it will be much easier to reinstall.
Tip #3, remove the studs that attach the downpipe to the back of the turbo, otherwise you may not be able to get the pipe off the turbo, there just isn't enough room - typical for MINI. One thing you do not have to do is "service mode", it really won't help that much.
We had one of the studs gall when trying to remove it, fortunately it damaged the stud and not the threads into the turbo, a good tap cleaned the hole right up and a little copper anti-sieze made the new one go in easily. Replacement studs from Baron are quite a bit shorter BTW.
A good tool box is a must for this job, you'll wind up using a bunch of different extensions and other tools just trying to reach some of the more difficult screws.